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SUDDENLY SHE STOPPED, WITH A LITTLE GASP OF AMAZEMENT
LESTER WAS NOT ALONE
one who thinks and knows and has lived. And, besides — why, I love you!"
A curious light came into the Strange Woman's face.
"Dear boy," she said slowly, "this has all been«very well, and perhaps I have helped you to pass away the time more or less agreeably, but — you dont know what you are talking about when you say you love me. You couldn't, really, you know; not if you have any adequate idea of what I have been and am." Her voice was queerly wistful.
"I'm no fool, and not a child," he said sullenly. "I know — and I want you with me. And I will not give vou up."
"Yet 1 must go. So, if "
"Yes," he shouted in sudden frenzy — "that's it. I'm going with you."
Then he crushed her, unresisting, in his arms. A moment after, she freed herself.
' ' I must go — my trunks are not yet packed. I will take the evening train for the city," she said, and, without another word, turned and hurried away. He also swung off, with nervous, rapid strides, and neither
saw the girl, drooping, almost dying, near where they had stood.
Unconsciously, the hand that grasped her little apron unclasped, and, unheeded, the scarlet apples rolled at her feet.
"Make me strong, dear God, for just a little while!" she whispered, and then, lest he should reach the cottage and, not finding her, suspect that she knew, she choked back the gasping sobs and fled swiftly from the fields.
When, later, Lester did, in fact, reach the cottage, he approached with caution and peered thru the kitchen window. Rose was busily preparing the evening meal. Furtively, he stole round the house, entered by the front door and ascended to his bedroom, where, with feverish haste, he threw into a satchel a few articles of clothing, concealing the satchel under the bed. Then, after changing his working-clothes for the suit he ordinarily wore into the near-by town, he descended to the kitchen. Rose, he observed, was also dressed to go out, and the girl caught the question in his glance.
"I— they expect me at the church fair," she said.